Is a Bloomberg license needed for the financial datafeed toolbox?

Hi, I'm considering getting the datafeed toolbox to incorporate real time data from Bloomberg into my code.

The functions listed for the toolbox suggest they are all you need to call data from Bloomberg servers.

But having reflected on the $2,000+ price tag for a basic Bloomberg stand-alone service, I don't think that's likely.

Apart from downloading the datafeed toolbox, are there other files/software/ licenses that you need in order to call Bloomberg (or Reuters) data?

Because getting free access to Bloomberg embedded in the Matlab, without a Bloomberg account, sounds too good to be true.

Thanks

- 17 year old Matlab beginner

Answer 1

[Andreas Goser]

Your guess is correct. The BLOOMBERG functionality can only be used when you also have purchased data access from Bloomberg (I do not know however what types of business model they have).

If you are a student, then you likely are happy with using the YAHOO function. This is not real-time, but good enough to learn.

[Xu Ji]

Okay. Thanks!

Answer 2

[Thomas]

Google does provide every second data, as opposed to Bloomberg which is delayed by 15 mins. without the license.

[Andreas Goser]

I was under the impression that real-time vs. 15 min. delay is a distinguishing factor between free data providers and commercial providers.

[Thomas]

it was till Google got in the game.. I take real time (??) every second data from google finance..

[Thomas]

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/at-long-last-real-time-stock-quotes-are.html here is google blog link announcing 'real-time' data

[Xu Ji]

Thanks for the tip, I totally forgot about Google!

For reference to other Matlab newbies, I found this file: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/25433-google-finance-historical-stock-data-downloader

which allowed me to get quotes from the Google finance website.

The only downside for both Yahoo and Google is they don't have information on bonds, whereas Bloomberg has charts for every asset class. I was going to include some government bonds in my hypothetical portfolio, but I'll have to manually input the data myself, or figure out a way to grab from other websites.

And then build a front end in excel, and some sort of timer to make it update every second.

I guess this has eradicated my need for the datafeed toolbox! Thanks Andreas and Thomas, I may appear again if I have more questions :)